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Such a world corporation would be a financial aggregation immensely greater than any in the past. Its principles of organisation, however, would not materially differ from those with which we are familiar. In each country a board of directors would hold control over constituent companies, and at London, Paris or New York a high Federal Council would settle controversies and make arrangements for the business of the world. Each company would have two elements of protection against unfair treatment; a community of interest secured through an interchange of stock and a representative on the Federal Council.
A development, such as is here outlined, is in advance of the psychological preparation of the world. We have not yet succeeded in regulating corporations, and there would remain innumerable difficulties and inequalities as between nations, which could not easily be settled. The price which such concerns might be allowed to pay for ores or charge for finished products and the pressure which they might put upon workmen might cause financial quarrels, leading to international controversies. If the governments held hands off, even greater evils might result. The various peoples would hesitate to turn over their basic industries to a private corporation beyond the regulation either of competitors or of their own government.
But we are here concerned not with the end but with the direction of international capitalism, and this direction tends to be the same as that of national capitalism. Division of the field, interchange of stock, community of interest, co-operation and combination in one form or another are as much a temptation in the relation of firms separated by a frontier as between those within one customs union. Capital is fluid. It is quantitative. It is potentially international. A hundred dollars is indistinguishable from a certain number of pounds, marks or francs. The machinery for an international combination of capital is already present, the beginnings of international investment have already been made. Further progress waits only upon the removal of barriers, in part traditional. The larger economic interests of the nations, and of most of the classes within the nations, lead towards the removal of these barriers and towards the gaining of that security without which international investment is dangerous and conventions and agreements almost worthless.
Given such an economic co-operation and such an economic interpenetration of rival European nations, and the political and diplomatic conflicts would grow less acrid and dangerous. As the process continued the interest of each nation in the welfare of its neighbours would become so great as to make international war as unthinkable as a war of Pennsylvania against New York. A vital and powerful international spirit, which already exists but is held in check by the fear and insecurity of each independent nation, would be given full sway. There would be a new Europe and a new world, in which war would be but a vague and hateful memory.
Such developments, however, are slow and generations live their uncertain lives during a period of transition. While waiting for an economic internationalism to develop to maturity the nations remain on guard, armed, threatened and threatening. The change from our present anarchy to a future concord will not be swift.
For the time even an increase of the economic unit to include several nations instead of one is not likely to put an end to all international economic strife. It is not improbable that the proximate economic development will be not internationalism but supra-nationalism. Just as the customs union grew from a district to a nation, so it may grow to include a group of nations but not the whole world. The world may come to be divided into a group of five or six vast economic units, each of which would be composed of one or several or indeed many political units. The British Empire, the Russian Empire, the United States, China and Japan, South America, one or two economic coalitions of west and central Europe (with their colonial possessions) would furnish a far more stable economic equilibrium for the world than is the present division of the powers. Each of these groups would have both agricultural and manufacturing resources; none of them would be imperatively obliged to fight for new territories. While there would be friction, while one group would have a population in proportion to its resources in excess of a neighbouring group, the sheer brutal necessity of expansion which now forces nations to fight would be largely moderated.
Such a division of the world into seven or six or perhaps fewer economic aggregates though not easy is quite within the bounds of possibility. Three of these aggregates, Britain, Russia and the United States, are already political units; the chief difficulty would consist of western and central Europe. No thoroughgoing political amalgamation of such countries as France, Germany and Italy is at all proximate, but some form of economic unity is not impossible. The bond which would join these countries might be less tight and therefore stronger than the Ausgleich, which holds together the kingdoms of Austria and Hungary. In the beginning it might be merely a series of trade conventions terminable on notice; from this it might grow to more permanent trade agreements and finally to a customs union. While the opposition to such an economic union would be strong the forces driving in this direction would also be powerful. As the really great nations emerge, as Russia, the United States and the British Empire increase their population into the hundreds of millions and their wealth into the hundreds of billions, the individual nations of Europe will become economically insignificant and economically unsafe. Only by a pooling of their resources will they be able to escape from the crushing superiority of the nations with large bulk and from an insecurity which makes for war.
Even with such an economic rearrangement of the world the west European coalitions would be unsafe unless they lessened the rate of increase of their population. Never before has this population grown so rapidly. In the decade ending 1810 western Europe (including the nations lying to the west of Russia), added 6.3 millions to its numbers; in the decade ending 1900 it added almost 19 millions. Despite a decline in the birth-rate, the mortality has fallen so far that the population is reaching a point where it will be difficult to secure adequate food supplies from abroad. Rather than starve or live under the constraint of scarce food and high food prices, the West European powers will fight for new territory from which to feed their people.
With the industrial development of Asia, and especially of China, this danger will be enhanced. Of the three great nuclei of population in the world, Eastern Asia, Southern Asia and Western (and Central) Europe, only one has been able to draw upon the surplus food of the world. Eight hundred million Asiatics have been forced to live on their own meagre home resources. As China begins to export coal, iron, textiles and other manufactured products, however, she will be able, whether politically independent or not, to compete with Europe for the purchase of this food supply. Not only will China's population probably increase with the advent of industrialism but the standard of living of her population will rise, and her competition with Europe for the sale of manufactured products and the purchase of food will become intense. The cheap, patient, disciplined labour of China's hundreds of millions will be fighting with the Belgian, the German and the Italian wage-earners to secure the food which it will be necessary to import.
It is not a yellow, but a human peril; a mere addition to the hungry mouths that are to be fed. The supply of exportable food that can be raised in the world has of course not reached its maximum, but beyond a certain point every increase in agricultural production means a more than proportional increase in the cost of the product. To feed eight hundred millions costs much more than twice as much as to feed four hundred millions. Even though China secure only a minor part of the exportable food, it will by just so much increase the strain upon the industrial populations of Europe.
It is a crisis for European industrialism, a slowly preparing crisis with infinitely tragic possibilities. What it involves is not a mere re-distribution of wealth and income but an adjustment of population to the available home and foreign resources in food. Collectivism will not permanently save the European wage-earner from hunger if he continues to multiply his numbers faster than the visible food supply increases. A decline in the rate of population growth is essential.
Fortunately this decline is already in progress. All the nations of Western and Central Europe are moving towards a lower birth-rate and in France this diminution has reached a point where there is no longer a natural increase. In a few decades the birth rate will probably begin to fall everywhere faster than the death rate declines. An adjustment of the population to its probable resources will be in progress.
In this progressive decline in the birth rate is to be found the greatest of all the factors making for internationalism and peace. It is a development which takes away the edge from the present frantic effort of industrial nations to secure a monopolistic control of foreign resources. It permits the gradual creation of an equilibrium between the nation's population and its physical resources at home and abroad.
Powerful forces in the world are at present slowly making for an economic internationalism to supplant the economic nationalism which to-day makes for war. The problem that faces the United States is what shall be its policy and action in view of the present nationalistic strife and of the slowly maturing economic internationalism.
CHAPTER XXI
AN IMMEDIATE PROGRAMME
To the practical man who wants to know what to do and when and how to do it, general principles seem unreal and valueless. He is interested in the decisions of the next few months, not in a vague general direction of events for the coming century. And so in international politics he would like to decide what the nation shall do now about the British blacklist, the German submarines, the Mexican revolution, the California-Japanese situation, and he is not keenly interested in the formulation of a policy which seems to hang high above the difficult concrete problems that must be solved immediately. He may languidly agree with proposals to create a community of interest among colonising nations and to establish the freedom of the sea, but he wishes to know whether in the meanwhile we are to back up Carranza in Mexico and what we are to do if the revolutionists "shoot up" an American town. While we work for these ideals, are we to allow Germany to sink our liners and Japan to swallow up China, or are we to fight?
This attitude is not unreasonable. A general policy is of little value unless we can make successive decisions conform to it. But it is not easy or always possible to predict these decisions. We can tell approximately how many people in the United States will die next year, but not how many will die in any particular family. We can advise a man who is walking from New York to San Francisco to take a generally westward course, but for any given mile of the road the direction may be north or south or east. A trend of policy is made up of innumerable deflections, small or large; it is an irregular chain of successive actions, which do not all tend in one direction. Even if we narrow our field of vision and seek to elaborate a more immediate policy, we do not escape from the vagueness which inheres in all such general conclusions.
In the main our problem consists in using the influence of the United States to create such an economic harmony among the nations, and to give each nation such a measure of security as to permit them to agree upon an international policy, which will be in the interest of all. The chief elements of this programme are two in number: to create conditions within the United States which will permit us to exert a real influence; and to use this influence in the creation of an international organisation, which will give each nation a measure of economic and military security, and prevent any nation from wantonly breaking the peace.
How far we can progress towards such an organisation will depend upon the course and uncertain issue of the present war. The war may end with the Central Allies crushed, with Germany reduced in size and Austria and Turkey dismembered. It may end with a lesser defeat for the Central Powers and with lesser penalties. There may be an inconclusive peace, which may either be a mere truce or a new basis of agreement between nations disillusioned by the conflict. Finally the war may end with the partial or even complete victory of the Central Powers, either through their overcoming the united opposition of their enemies or by detaching one or more from their alliances.
What the United States can effect at the conclusion of the war will inevitably depend upon which of these developments takes place. Assuming that we ourselves are not drawn into the conflict, it is probable that our influence will be larger if neither of the great coalitions wins an overwhelming victory. If the Western and Eastern Allies completely crush the resistance of the Central Powers, it is hardly likely that they will concede to us, who have not borne a share of the danger and toil, a large discretion in proposing the terms of peace. Such an unconditional victory by either side would probably lead to an onerous and vindictive settlement, for each coalition is bound together by promises to its constituent nations, and these promises cannot be fulfilled without wholesale spoliation. Moreover, each coalition will wish to weaken the future power of its opponents. A request by the United States that the victorious alliance deal generously with the defeated nations in order to create the conditions of a permanent peace would therefore probably meet with a more or less courteous denial. On the other hand, a drawn battle, or one in which the defeated party asking for peace still retained a considerable power of resistance, might lead to conditions in which the influence of the neutral nations, led by the United States, would be all-decisive. A situation might be created out of which no further fighting could bring a tolerable peace, and the nations might agree to some form of incipient international organisation, to which the United States could contribute.
The problem of Constantinople illustrates this possibility. That city, with the command of the straits, is likely to go to Russia if the Allies win, and to fall under a disguised German-Austrian domination if the Central Powers are victorious. Either situation would be vicious; either would leave the commerce of the defeated nations at the mercy of the great power that held the Bosphorus. If on the other hand, the two opposed alliances were almost equally formidable at the end of the war, or if England and France became unwilling to fight longer in order to give Russia a strategic position at Constantinople, a true solution of the problem might be obtained by neutralising the straits. A union of all the powers might guarantee the free passage of these waters at all times, and an American commissioner in command of a small American army might carry out the wishes of an international council. It would not be a pleasant or in any sense a profitable adventure for the United States, and we should accept the task most unwillingly. Our sole motive would be the belief that our acceptance of this responsibility would remove one of the greatest causes of future war.
Such an assumption of obligations at Constantinople would constitute for us a new and dangerous international policy. While Constantinople is easily defended and while ample assistance would be forthcoming if defence were necessary, it can hardly be doubted that a rupture of such an international agreement guaranteeing the neutrality of the straits would bring on a war in which we should be obliged to take our part. Yet the danger which we thus incur by entering upon an agreement looking to international peace is perhaps less than the danger of not entering since if Constantinople causes another world war, as it may if not neutralised, it is by no means unlikely that sooner or later we may be forced into the struggle. It is better to risk our peace in seeking to avert a world disaster than to permit the great war to come.
There are other international policies which in favouring circumstances might be urged by the United States at the close of the war. We might append our signature to international conventions defining and guaranteeing a freedom of the seas, to agreements looking towards a co-operative exploitation of backward countries, to laws regulating the settlement of arbitrable international disputes, and to such special conventions as might be made for the re-neutralisation of Belgium. Upon the basis of such agreements, even though they were but tentative and partial, we might enter with the other nations upon some form of a League of Peace and International Polity, which would secure these new conventions from being rudely disturbed by the aggression of one or two powers.
Whether we help to carry out these policies at the close of this war, will depend upon the balance of power then existing in Europe and upon the mood of the nations. If Russia wants Constantinople, if Britain insists upon the right of capture at sea, if France, Italy, Servia, Roumania and the British colonies demand territorial gains without compensation, and these powers are able to enforce their will, our delegates to the Peace Conference may make representations and suggestions, but will not be able to carry them through. Nor if the Central Powers are victorious and unyielding, shall we be able to make our advice count. No one power or group of powers could carry out such a policy against the will of a majority or even of a strong minority of powers. Unless the conditions at the end of the war are such as to convince the victors (if there are victors) that it is wiser to readjust the world than to get all they can, unless great nations like Britain, France and Germany can agree that a groundwork for future peace is more valuable than territorial gains and punitive damages, the opportunity for a peaceful reconstruction will pass. New coalitions will be formed; new wars will be fought.
It is of course possible that such an international reconstruction will be entered upon only with hesitation by several of the nations, including some of the victors. It is even conceivable that the movement might be furthered by certain of the belligerents on both sides, as for example Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy (aided by the United States and other neutrals) and be opposed to some extent by, let us say, Russia and Turkey. It is not assumed that this particular division among the nations will actually occur, but merely that upon the conclusion of the war the moral integrity of the alliances may be shattered and with the prospect of new cleavages and disagreements, an effort be made, aided by the neutrals, to create conditions doing away with the present balance of power. A war disintegrates the elements making for success in war; enemies become allies and allies enemies. At the final council board each nation tends to return to its allegiance to itself, and with the passing of the old alliances a new league based upon totally different principles becomes possible.
It is, however, with a tempered optimism that we should approach the international conference that is to end this war. Even if America is represented and wisely represented, even if the powers are willing to listen to proposals looking toward international reconstruction, the probability that there will be an inclination to make concessions is not overwhelming. Hatred, distrust, the injection of petty interests, the tenacity of diplomatic conservatism will all work against a wise forbearance and a far-seeing policy, and the errors of the Vienna Conference of 1815 and of the Berlin Conference of 1878 may be duplicated or worse. There is at least an even chance that the international situation will be quite as unsatisfactory and perilous in 1920 as it was in 1900. Progress towards international reconstruction is a possible but by no means certain part of the agenda of the diplomatic conference, which will meet when enough millions of the youth of Europe have been slaughtered and maimed.
But those who desire peace and the international relations which will alone make peace possible have learned to be patient, and if the problem advances only slowly to a solution it will be sufficient satisfaction to know that it advances at all. After this war there will be many long years during which the nations may study at their leisure the clumsiness of the arrangements which make for international conflict. There will be years in which America, if she is worthy and strong, will be able to make her influence for peace felt.
The problem, however, is not how rapidly we shall move but whether we shall move at all and in what direction. That direction seems to be clearly indicated by the recent trend of world events. With the passing of our isolation we are given the opportunity to use our immense influence directly, continuously and intelligently for the strengthening of the economic bonds which make for a world peace. Time and the economic trend work on our side. We can hasten, though we cannot and need not create, the vast unifying movement which comes with the further integration of industry. What we can contribute to this consummation is an ability to see the world as it is and a willingness to work and if necessary to fight for the changes without which international peace is impossible. We must avoid a cautious yet dangerous clinging to a philosophy of national irresponsibility, as we must likewise avoid the excesses of a nationalistic imperialism. We must take our part manfully, side by side with the other nations, in the great reorganisation of the world, which even to-day is foreshadowed by an economic internationalism, now in its beginnings.
In the last century and a half the United States has made three great contributions to the political advancement of the world. The first was the adoption of the constitution, an experiment in federalism on a scale larger than ever before known in history. The second was the adoption of a policy, by which the vast territories of all the states were held in common, and these new territories admitted to statehood upon exactly the same terms as the original commonwealths, which formed the Union. Our third contribution was the Monroe Doctrine, which removed two continents from the field of foreign conquest and guaranteed to each American nation the freedom to determine its own form of government and its own sovereignty.
To-day the nation is again in a position to contribute to the political progress of the world. It stands before a fourth decision. Either it can cling hopelessly to the last vestiges of its policy of isolation or can launch out into imperialistic ventures, or finally it can promote, as can no other nation, a policy of internationalism, which will bind together the nations in a union of mutual interest, and will hasten the peaceful progress of the economic and political integration of the world.
1
Ernest Barker. Crusades. Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, Vol. VII, p. 526.
2
For a sketch of the economic influences bearing upon war, see the brilliant essay of Prof. Edward Van Dyke Robinson, "War and Economics in History and Theory," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. XV, pp. 581-622. Reproduced in "Sociology and Social Progress," compiled by Prof. Thomas Nixon Carver (1905), pp. 133-173. In the present chapter I have borrowed extensively from Professor Robinson's essay.
3
"Early in the year 1901, a foreign ambassador at Washington remarked in the course of a conversation that, although he had been in America only a short time, he had seen two different countries, the United States before the war with Spain, and the United States since the war with Spain. This was a picturesque way of expressing the truth, now generally accepted, that the war of 1898 was a turning point in the history of the American republic."—"The United States as a World Power," by Archibald Gary Coolidge. New York, 1912.